by Vicki Hinze
“Protect you?” She rolled her gaze. “Oh, please.”
“Knock it off.” All sense of subtlety faded from his tone. He would have preferred to avoid conflict—he was mellow from having great sex with a woman he had wanted for years, and she was still in his arms, and he liked having her there, regardless of orders or circumstances—but she wasn’t giving him much choice, and he was just tired enough and scared enough to say to hell with it and hit her head-on. “I’ve been thinking about us and you, and I know now you’ve been protecting me. You’ve been protecting all the operatives. That’s why you take on the highest risk missions alone. It’s why you refuse to have a partner working with you, even when common sense tells everyone, including you, that you need an active partner to cover your back. It’s why you’re hypercritical of everyone in the unit. You’re not out to destroy anyone’s esteem or ego; you’re hell-bent on protecting them all. You’re always protecting us all.” He paused, softened his voice, but kept the steel in his gaze. “I admire you for it, Gabby, but I don’t want or need it. Don’t protect me. Just let me do my job.”
“Don’t protect you?” She managed a crackle of a laugh, and artfully dodged the rest. “I’m still breathing, Agent Grayson. Doesn’t that prove you’re protecting me?”
She was baiting him. He’d gotten too close and she was running scared. Unfortunately, she was also right. “I need the evidence.”
“And I told you you’d get it whether I’m dead or alive.” Gabby sat up, cut her eyes to look at him. “Did you lie to Conlee?”
“No.” Max chewed at his inner lip, propped a hand on his hip.
She didn’t believe him for a second. Not a second. He had lied, all right, and if he trusted her, he would admit it.
“No?”
His jaw clamped tight and he folded his arms over his chest. “No.”
“I see.” No trust. Well, hell. That was fine with her, though it did hurt. She had protected him for five years, keeping him out of danger. Of course, she’d feel twinges of betrayal. But having kept him out of things had given her an advantage. Max wasn’t lying to her, and she knew it. But he wasn’t offering the truth, either. Bent on pinning back his ears for that, she gentled her voice. “Well, then, Max, tell me, darling. Did you allow Commander Conlee to continue believing something he assumed but you knew to be untrue?”
The lines along the sides of Max’s mouth tightened, sobering his expression. Caught between the rock and the hard place, he rolled to his feet and paced a short path beside the bed, mumbling something nasty, she felt sure, under his breath.
The memory of him naked distracted her significantly. “Excuse me?”
He glared at her. “I said, more or less.”
Aha. Maybe there was hope here for trust after all. “Well, which is it? More, or less?”
“More.” He stopped near her feet and glowered at her. “It was more.”
Ah, progress. She braced her back against the pillows. “Why did you do it?”
If looks could kill, she wouldn’t have to wait for the infection or a bullet. “We’re partners, Gabby. What the hell did you expect me to do? Sacrifice you without even a fight?”
“That’s true, but it’s not the truth. You’re evading me again.” Gabby studied him a long moment. “You do know that it’s the worst kind of sin to lie to a dying woman, right?”
“Do you get some kind of perverse thrill out of pushing me, woman?”
“It’s the only way I can get you to give me a straight answer. In case you haven’t noticed, darling, you protect me, too.”
Max blew out a breath that hiked his shoulders, clearly wishing that at this moment he could be anywhere but in her bedroom stuck in this situation. “I did it because I know how you feel,” he said, his voice gruff, his tone sharp. “And I don’t want you to die with regrets.”
Promising. Very promising. Her heart rate quickened.
“And?”
His glower faded to a distant, removed look that spoke volumes of uncertainty that his saying anything more was wise. Just when she thought he had decided to ignore her, he went on. “And because I care about you. I have for a long time.”
“We’ve been friends a long time.”
He met her gaze. “I don’t sleep with friends.”
A bubble of warm joy burst and spread through her chest. She smiled and held out her arms to him. “Thank you, Max.”
He stepped into them, held her, and she wished that holding him didn’t feel so good. He cared. And she cared about him. Yet telling him that now would be the worst kind of cruelty.
Like her, he had been alone all his life with no one to depend on for anything. With no one special person caring about him. From all she’d gathered, he hadn’t even had a best friend like Sybil to lean on now and then. For Gabby to tell him she cared, and then die … No. No, she couldn’t. Finally having that intimate connection with someone and then losing it would be far worse, far harder on him, than never having known it at all.
Max waited for her to say something, anything about caring for him, but she didn’t. Disappointed and a little annoyed because he’d put himself on the line telling her how he felt and now he was standing on the line alone, he went into the kitchen, found a camping stove and coffeepot, and headed for the patio.
Half an hour later, he returned to the bedroom with a tray. Gabby lay on her side, her eyes closed. Was she sleeping, or just relaxing? Considering their circumstances, either would be nothing short of a miracle. “Gabby, breakfast.”
She grumbled. Moaned. Asleep and slow to awaken—amazingly slow for a seasoned operative—she muttered something about her docket being full and missing work today. “Call Lisa, baby. Tell her I’m too sick.”
He set the tray down. Watched and listened. She rambled on and on about “the office,” her current cases. Clearly delirious. “Gabby?”
“What, Max?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically. “Actually, I’m not. I’m miserable. There’s an orchestra of drummers beating different rhythms against my skull. My head is spinning and full of cobwebs, and my stomach is upset. It’s the flu. The really raunchy kind … unless—” She sucked in a sharp breath and her eyes stretched open. “Max, do you think I could finally be pregnant? We’ve tried for such a long time, I know, but maybe—do you think?”
Pregnant? Jesus, she was totally out of it. “I don’t know. Maybe,” he said, humoring her and reaching for the phone. This was serious and strange. Erickson’s notes hadn’t said anything about these kinds of effects, but Keith had said new effects were bound to surface with the vaccine. Was it a stretch to assume they could surface in the infection itself?
She turned on her side and curled her knees to her chest. “Are you calling Lisa, honey?”
Her assistant, Lisa Martin. “I’ll call her in just a second.” He dialed Candace’s number. “I want Dr. Burke to come take a look at you.”
“Dr. Burke?” Gabby cast him a totally blank look that sent shivers racing through his back and made his skin crawl.
“Your GYN,” he lied without so much as a blink. The infection was affecting her memory. That had to be what was going on.
She looked puzzled, but nodded. “Oh. Okay.”
Max stepped out into the hallway, the ringing phone pressed to his ear.
Finally, Keith answered at Candace’s house. “Hey,” Max said. “You’d better get over here. I have a real problem on my hands.”
“What is it?” Keith asked.
How did Max answer that? He couldn’t say that Gabby thought they were married. Burke thought they were married, too. He couldn’t say she thought she might be pregnant. Burke wouldn’t find that odd at all. What could he say? “She’s having really weird delusions.”
Keith muttered a curse. “Candace is stable. I had hoped Gabby wouldn’t—never mind. I’m on my way.”
Hearing the dial tone, Max walked back into the bedroom and dropped the
receiver on the bedside table near Gabby’s water glass.
“I think a girl would be nice,” she said, looking up at him from her pillow. “I know you’ve always wanted a boy, but don’t you think a girl would be nice?”
This turn of events was worse than bad, and he had to act now. “Gabby, you’ve got to focus, honey, and think hard. You’ve got the infection; I’m sure of it. I need to know where you put the evidence.”
“Evidence?” She blinked hard. “Max, you know I never discuss my cases. It’s a direct violation of ethics.”
“This is different, honey.” He clasped her hands in his. “I’m talking about the SDU evidence, not evidence on one of your judicial cases.”
She looked at him with zero recognition. “SDU?”
Oh, God. The bottom fell out of Max’s stomach. She wasn’t faking it. She really didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Max, I asked you a question, darling. What is SDU?”
“Nothing.” It would pass. As soon as Keith stepped in and treated her, she’d get her thoughts together and remember then. Max swiped at his brow with a hand that shook.
This was Z-4027. She would get worse, not better. What if she never remembered?
That possibility was all too real, but he couldn’t afford to believe it. She had to remember everything. But how? The infection would have her comatose. She would die comatose. How—when—could she remember or tell him if she did?
He had blown it. Knowing better, he had gotten involved beyond friendship, slept with her, and now she mattered. Now, he was screwed. She was going to die and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
While he wouldn’t go so far as to say he loved her, he was in serious lust and very connected to her. She pulled at him inside. Deep, in some untouched place he couldn’t point to but understood was there. And though he was crazy as hell for it, he liked the feeling.
She touched him, mind, body, and soul.
And he was going to kill her.
Max stared down at her for a long moment, repulsed, his insides ripping to shreds. Guilt sank down to the marrow of his bones and he pressed a quick kiss to her forehead. Oh, Jesus. How am I going to get either of us out of this alive?
Sybil couldn’t stand the wait any longer. She called Commander Conlee at headquarters, and barely gave him time to say hello before she hurled her question at him. “Is Gabby still alive?”
“So far.”
“Commander, you’d better be right about Grayson. If not, you’re going to have a cold winter commanding the weather station in the Arctic.”
“I’m right about Grayson,” he said, ignoring her threat.
“Care to elaborate?” Gabby hadn’t exactly been kind to Max.
“Not at the present time, ma’am. Soon.”
Sybil frowned. “The sooner the better.” Out of patience, she clenched the receiver until her hand hurt. She was Vice President of the only superpower left in the world. Head of Oversight, which reviewed and made final call decisions on every SDU mission worldwide. And yet she lacked the power to put the fear of God into Commander Donald Conlee.
Ordinarily, and many times in the past, she had admired that about him. But this was about Gabby. And right now, Sybil Stone didn’t feel admiration. She felt terror.
“I’m sending a second team. It arrives tonight.”
Stark and bleak, paralyzing terror. “Why?”
“Because Grayson and Gabby expect one.”
“Have you ordered them to stand down?”
“No, ma’am. Their orders are to cancel Agents Kincaid and Grayson—just as they must be.” His sigh sent static through the line. “We really don’t have a choice on this, ma’am.”
They didn’t. And Sybil hated Conlee for that. She stood up in her home office and paced the room before her desk. Usually, she enjoyed the subtle scent of peach potpourri. Today, it smelled sickly sweet. Now, Gabby and Max would be dying. Would his being with her comfort or devastate Gabby?
Sybil turned, headed back in the other direction, swiped her hair back from her face. Gabby would be devastated. Of course, she would. Just because she didn’t want to recognize the signs of love didn’t mean love wasn’t there. To lose a loved one and fail to protect the nation and die was more than even she could take and go to her grave with any sliver of peace.
And that her best friend would suffer all of this and probably more had tears flowing down the Vice President’s grieving face.
Chapter Twenty-one
Just after seven A.M., Keith finished examining Gabby and motioned Max into the hallway outside her bedroom door. He whispered, “Her condition has really deteriorated, Max.”
“I know.” Her lack of memory terrified him. It also created major obstacles and dilemmas for them both. “Has the vaccine done anything to help Candace?”
Keith nodded that it had. “She’s still critical but she’s stable and, frankly, her respiration is better than Gabby’s.” Worn and weary, he pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. “Dr. Erickson is watching over her now.”
“Do you trust him with her?”
“David lost a son to EEE,” Keith said, knowing in his eyes. “He’s obsessed with finding a cure, and he has more experience researching it and Z-4027 than anyone else alive.”
“Are you going to give the vaccine to Gabby?”
“I can.” Keith blew out a heavy sigh that rounded his cheeks, clearly wishing the decision were someone else’s to make. “But there’s no way to predict her reaction, Max. You’ve got to understand that.”
“Trial studies haven’t yet been done. I’m aware.”
That Keith didn’t ask how Max had become aware proved he already knew the answer. “Only on Candace.” Leaning a shoulder against the wall, he sent Max a warning look. “The injection could kill Gabby.”
“Or it could save her life,” he countered.
“Her body could also reject it.”
Max thought a second. “What about conventional treatments?”
“There aren’t any that can compete with the accelerated actions of Z-4027. By the time anything we’ve got could possibly work, the patient is already dead.”
Keith had avoided Gabby’s name but that didn’t make his words any easier to stomach.
“It’s going to have to be your call,” Keith said, somber and empathetic, knowing what having to make this call cost. “She’s your wife.”
His wife. Max stilled, stared up at the popcorn ceiling, and did his best not to outwardly react. He wasn’t her husband, he was the partner she had never trusted or wanted. The man she’d slept with only because she was lonely and about to die and wanted to feel special. The man who had slept with her because he wanted her to die feeling special to assuage his guilt for killing her and to lighten the load on his conscience because he felt a lot more than he had bargained for feeling. Now he had to make a decision that could determine what little was left of her life? A woman he genuinely cared about—whether or not he wanted to—who tolerated him only because she was facing death?
As hellish as this decision was to make under any circumstances, it’d have to be easier if she were his real wife. Then, he would at least know she trusted him to act in her best interests.
“Max?” Keith asked. “What do you want to do?”
Max stalled, unable to force himself to answer. With the vaccine, Gabby could die. Without it, she would die. When he got to that bottom line, what choice did he really have?
Still, Gabby had made him belong, and deep down she had to feel special to him, too. He’d been embarrassingly honest about that. Making love with her, sleeping with her sprawling on him, hearing her restful breathing, smelling her skin, her hair, sensing her body weight on the bed beside him—he’d liked all of it. None of it was wise or logical, but it felt right and good. He didn’t want to lose her.
Oh, man, he was in deep trouble. Had he really believed that he could remain neutral? He’d never been neutral about her, and he
couldn’t even remember a time when he hadn’t wanted her.
“Max?” Keith asked again. “What do you want me to do?”
Max shut out his selfish motives and asked himself one question: In this situation, what would Gabby do?
The answer came swift, hard, and certain. He stared straight into Burke’s eyes and didn’t hesitate. “Give her the vaccine.”
Nodding, Keith walked back into the bedroom to prepare the injection.
Max leaned his forehead against the hallway wall, feeling its rough nubs scrape against his forehead. Not once had he asked anyone for anything. Now, he prayed.
When he walked back into the bedroom, Keith was at Gabby’s bedside, giving her the injection. As he pushed the vaccine into her body, Max dared to ask God to spare Gabby’s mind and her life. He had no idea if he would be heard or laughed at or answered—he’d never prayed before—but millions had, and it had comforted them through generations of recorded history, so it had to be worth a shot. Still, not knowing for sure, Max felt no comfort. And he resented that most of all.
“That’s it.” Keith disposed of the needle in a sharps box and dropped it into his black bag, resting on the edge of the bed. “For now, that’s all we can do.”
Gabby appeared to be sleeping. Max watched the rise and fall of her chest. So far, there seemed to be no disruption in her breathing. “How long before we know anything?”
“Could be a minute or less,” he said, his mouth grim. “The longer it takes, the better.”
It didn’t kill her immediately. Minutes passed, but the tension didn’t ease. It hovered around her like a canopy, and kept his chest in a vise. Every instinctive warning an operative could get warned Max to back off, gain some perspective and objectivity, but he couldn’t seem to look away from her.
“I could use some caffeine. Be right back.” Keith left the room.
Max sat down on the edge of the bed beside Gabby, clasped her hand in both of his. “Don’t leave me, Gabby. Not yet.”
His throat went thick and his eyes burned. He willed her to live, silently cursed his fear that she wouldn’t, and prayed again—just in case God was real and was paying attention.